Cassie's & 'Muricaaaa's Birthdays, And the Plasma Games

Over the past two weeks, our apartment has been able to participate in two very special birthdays. On June 30th, we celebrated Cassie's, and we all went out to dinner as roommates. Let me repeat that. We ALL WENT OUT to dinner as roommates. That never happens because of everyone's conflicting schedules. But for Cassie, sacrifices are made. We got to go to Chiz's, which is this little asian hole in the wall in Idaho Falls that her parents used to go to while they were dating. I love hole in the walls. But I can't stand asian food. But like I said, for Cassie I can handle some sentimental asians. In our apartment we have this tradition of anytime we are all dressed up and pretty and going out together-we have our picture taken in front of our door. Its just the touch that makes it an official roommate outing. I love these girls so much! And I am so blessed  to have had them as roommates this semester!! After our dinner, we went to our apartments lounge where we had the lovely Michelle Fowler set up a surprise party for Cass. Fiestttaaaaahhh!


My Birthday Girl! I love you Cassie!

Brittany, Shaela, Cassie, Adell, & Marissa. 401 babaay!

Shaela, Marissa, and I at Chiz's.

The sweetest face!

We just love her!

I'm not sure who got her the handcuffs......

The next birthday we celebrated was America's! I absolutely love the forth of July. I love all of the family traditions my family has, the hot dogs and hamburgers, the smell of sunscreen, the cheap sunglasses, the truck driver American flag shirts, but what I think I love the most of all about the fourth of July is the fact that it brings out the redneck in everyone. It's always fun to see everyone else try to pull off something that is just in my blood. I felt like I was home. Almost ;). We all went to Idaho Falls, because they have the biggest firework show west of the Mississippi. We stayed there allllllll day long. One of the guys that came with us, Jake Slivka, had a friend who lived there who let us use his grill AND his pool. So around five we staked out our spot by the river for the show and then went to swim and eat. There was an insane number of people there- and I was seeing some crazy stuff. I swear we saw Slash from Guns and Roses, real life gypsies, and countless beer bellies. ahhh, the true spirit of the fourth. :)

My loves.

The Gang. Love them so much!

Leanda, Liv, and Cass. Leanda rocking the english flag....cause she had to.

They were shooting for four guys-but this is about as far as they got.

Shaela gets touchy sometimes..

Still trying...

Fletch.

Lovely ladies :)

Me, Norma and Liv. The two shortest people-and the tallest. We love you Liv!

The sunset over the River when we got back to IF.

Pretty successful fourth if you ask me. I mean it was no cornfield out in the country-but I did get to see a freaking huge firework show over the river behind the Idaho Falls Temple. I guess I can't ask for much more than that :)
Today, I didn't have any classes. So, I decided I would FINALLY go give plasma. I've been wanting to all semester. Not because I need the money- but because money is nice, and I'm a nursing major so any medical procedure has always been interesting to me. So I call them and make an appointment, and I'm off. I walk in this morning, and was greeted by the doctors office smell. The smell of the waiting chairs, and latex gloves, sanitizing chemicals. Yum. The receptionist gave me a bunch of papers to fill out, so I sat down and started doing that. In MY fluorescent purple pen, because there's was so dead. Filling out papers that I know are important in fluorescent colors just makes me feel like Elle Woods. You are probably thinking to yourself, why does she even have a fluorescent pen if she hates them? And my answer is, I do not know. My purse is Mary Poppins' bag. I don't know where half of the stuff inside of it came from. Anyway, I'm filling out papers and a girl came up from the back of the building-with the most sickly look on her face I had ever seen in my entire life. She started to pass out, and I could only watch-I was too far away to do anything about it. (Pet peeve of mine. seeing something really, really bad about to happen and you can't do anything about it.) I wasn't bothered by the fact that she was passing out, after all they are removing like 600ml of blood from you and putting it back in without any of the proteins and nutrients. I know that passing out is normal after something like that. What did bother me was the sound that her face made as she hit the tile floor. Nobody caught her, nobody was paying much attention. Which wasn't anyones fault. But it did make me cringe. The techs sat her down in a chair, and after a couple of minutes the sides of her face were already starting to bruise. I was thinking to myself that there was no way she didn't just break her nose. I heard a tech call my name, and by this point you can imagine I'm not to crazy about doing this. All I was thinking in my head was that I was at a reaping-and they drew my name. I went back to where she was standing, and she led me into a room where all of the machines were. Beside them were these huge C-shaped chairs. It was weird because nobody was in them. I looked over against the wall and there they all were. All these people that looked seriously ticked off about something, sitting quietly and very still in folding chairs. Only one word came to my mind. Tributes.
Some guy named Bobby came over and tied a tourniquet around my upper arm. I knew that he was checking my veins. He told my tech that I was good on either arm and smiled at me and walked away. I said in my head, don't you smile at me. I know what you're doing. You are making sure I have the perfect veins, the perfect pulse and the perfect blood to do this before you people kill me. Unbelieveable. I walked back to my chair, and as soon as I got there another tech called me and another guy( my peeta) back  down the hallway. Grace, was the name I read on her nametag. She started reading us the rules of the plasma center, what we should and shouldnt do before and after the donation has started. My Haymitch. At the end of her explaining, she asked us if we would still like to donate. Against my better judgement, I nodded my head. She told us that we could go back and wait in the chairs again. I followed my Peeta down the long hallway again, and we both sat down. I saw another guy who had just finished giving plasma come out of the doors. I stood this time, determined to save him from the same fate as the broken noised girl. Except he didnt pass out. He made it all the way to the receptionists desk, so I sat again. He was talking to her and his speech started to slur. He crumpled down to the ground slowly, like he knew what was about to happen. He started having a seizure, which is always scary to watch. For him they called an ambulance, which seemed to take forever to get there. Here is the single difference between the Plasma Center and the Hunger Games: I can leave. This was the craziest most unprofessionally run medical center I had ever seen. And there are lots more awesome ways to die than at the Plasma Center. I took my file up to the receptionists and told her to have a wonderful day, and that I wouldnt be a donor today, or any other day. She looked at me like I was nuts, and I looked at her like "you really expect me to donate here after what I've seen today?" and walked out. To everyone else in the waiting room that didnt or couldnt say no, all I have to say is this........

Happy Plasma Games.